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Birds, bees and laser beams

By Tom Shakespeare

SO, YOU want a baby… boy or girl? At the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia, prospective parents need no longer leave it to chance. For a few thousand dollars, this clinic will take a sample of sperm, colour its chromosomes with a fluorescent dye, and pass it through a laser instrument to separate Y-carrying “male” sperm from X-carrying “female” sperm. After that it’s just a matter of taking the batch you want for artificial insemination.

The method is not illegal in the US, and there would be few, if any, legal barriers to clinics in many …